Robert Wiseman Dairies has unveiled plans to recycle 100% of the waste from its dairies and distribution depots in the UK, with the intention of scrapping all waste sent to landfill.
The move follows a successful pilot scheme at the company’s dairy at Bellshill, near Glasgow where the proportion of waste being recycled rather than sent to landfill rose to 85%.
The company is now committed to introducing a Zero Waste to Landfill policy by the end of this year. It has identified alternative routes for the 1,500t of waste generated per year, to ensure it can all be recycled.
The Zero Waste project forms part of the company’s strategy to help ensure the long-term sustainability of the dairy industry. The large reductions in landfill mean the cost savings are significant and with large volumes of plastic and other materials being recycled, the environmental benefits are also substantial.
The pilot scheme has provided a blueprint to train staff throughout the company’s network of dairies and the scheme is also being introduced at the 15 distribution depots and Wiseman’s East Kilbride headquarters.
Robert Wiseman, chief executive at Robert Wiseman Dairies, said: “We are committed to reducing our impact on the environment and while it is a bold step to try and achieve zero waste to landfill, our pilot scheme has shown that big improvements can be made. We are confident that in the coming months we can move Bellshill to 100% recycling and our other dairies will follow suit.
“We understand this will be an incremental process that cannot be achieved overnight, but we are committed to improving the environmental performance of the business in the short term to ensure its long term sustainability.”
The move follows recent confirmation that Robert Wiseman Dairies has started full-scale trials of biofuels and liquid natural gas across its fleet of distinctive black and white vehicles.
The company has already invested £318M in a dairy network situated close to the UK’s major milk fields but on major motorway routes into the UK’s main population centres.